Lasher

Twenty-five

SO THIS IS Stolov. He knew the moment he stepped off the plane. They had tracked him all the way. And here was the big man, waiting for him, a bit overmuscular in his black raincoat, with large eyes of a pale indistinct color which nevertheless shone rather bright like clear glass.

The man had near-invisible blond eyelashes and bushy brows, and his hair was light. He looked Norwegian to Yuri. Not Russian. Erich Stolov.

“Stolov,” Yuri said, and, shifting his bag to the left, he extended his hand.

“Ah, you know me,” said the man. “I wasn’t sure that you would.” Accent, Scandinavian with a touch of something else. Eastern Europe.

“I always know our people,” said Yuri. “Why have you come to New Orleans? Have you been working with Aaron Lightner? Or are you here simply to meet me?”

“That is what I’ve come to explain,” said Stolov, placing his hand very lightly on Yuri’s back as they followed the carpeted corridor together, passengers streaming by them, the hollow space itself seeming to swallow all warm sounds. The man’s tone was very cooperative and open. Yuri didn’t quite believe it.

“Yuri,” said the other. “You shouldn’t have left the Motherhouse, but I understand why you did. But you know we are an authoritarian order. You know obedience is important. And you know why.”

“No, you tell me why. I am excommunicated now. I feel no obligation to talk to you. I came to see Aaron. That’s the only reason I am here.”

“I know that, of course I do,” said the other, nodding. “Here, shall we stop for coffee?”

“No, I want to go to the hotel. I want to meet with Aaron as soon as I can.”

“He couldn’t see you now if he wanted to,” said Stolov in a low conciliatory voice. “The Mayfair family is in a state of crisis. He is with them. Besides, Aaron is an old and loyal member of the Talamasca. He won’t be happy that you’ve come so impulsively. Your show of affection may even embarrass him.”

Yuri was silently infuriated by these words. He didn’t like this big blond-haired man.

“So I will find him and find out for myself. Listen, Stolov, I knew when I left I was out. Why are you talking this way to me-so patient, so agreeable? Does Aaron know you are here?”

“Yuri, you are valuable to the Order. Anton is a new Superior General. Perhaps David Talbot would have handled things much better. It’s in times of transition that we sometimes lose people whom we come, very much, to miss.”

The man gestured to the empty coffee shop, where china cups shimmered on smooth Formica tables. Smell of weak, American coffee, even here in this town.

“No, I want to go on,” said Yuri. “I am going to find Aaron. Then the three of us can talk, if you like. I want to tell Aaron I’m here.”

“You can’t do that now. Aaron is at the hospital,” said Stolov. “Rowan Mayfair has been found. Aaron is with the family. Aaron is in danger. That’s why it’s so important you listen to what I have to say. Don’t you see? This misunderstanding amongst us-it came about because we were trying to protect Aaron. And you.”

“Then you can explain it to both of us.”

“Hear me out first,” the man said gently. “Please.”

Yuri realized the man was virtually blocking his path. The man was larger than he was. He wasn’t so much a menace as he was a great obstacle, forceful and stubborn and believing in himself. His face was agreeable and intelligent, and once again he spoke in the same even, patient tone.

“Yuri, we need your cooperation. Otherwise Aaron may be hurt. You might say this is a rescue mission involving Aaron Lightner. Aaron Lightner has been drawn into the Mayfair family. He is no longer using good judgment.”

“Why not?”

But even as he asked this question, Yuri yielded. He turned, allowed himself to be led into the restaurant, and capitulated, taking a chair opposite the tall Norwegian, and watching in silence as the waitress was instructed to bring coffee, and something sweet to eat.

Yuri figured Stolov was perhaps ten years older than he. That meant Stolov was perhaps forty. As the black raincoat fell open, he saw the conventional Talamasca suit, expensive cut, tropical wool, but not ostentatious. The look of this generation. Not the tweed and leather patches of David and Aaron and their ilk.

“You’re very suspicious and you have a right to be,” said Stolov. “But Yuri, we are an order, a family. You shouldn’t have gone out of the Motherhouse the way you did.”

“You told me that already. Why did the Elders forbid me to speak to Aaron Lightner?”

“They had no idea that it would have such repercussions. They wanted only silence, an interval, in which to take measures to protect Aaron. They did not imagine those words spoken in a booming voice.”

The waitress filled their china cups with the pale, weak coffee. “Espresso,” said Yuri. “I’m sorry.” He pushed the pallid cup away.

The woman laid down rolls for them to eat, sweet-smelling, iced and sticky. Yuri wasn’t hungry. He had eaten something wholly unappetizing and very filling on the plane.

“You said they found Rowan Mayfair,” said Yuri, staring at the rolls, and thinking how sticky they would be if he touched them. “You mentioned a hospital.”

Stolov nodded. He drank his pale amber-colored coffee. He looked up with those peculiar soft light eyes. The absence of any color made them look vacant and then suddenly unaccountably aggressive. Yuri couldn’t figure why.

“Aaron is angry with us,” said Stolov. “He is not being cooperative. On Christmas Day something happened with the Mayfair family. He believes that if he had been present, he could have helped Rowan Mayfair. He blames us that he did not go to Rowan. He’s wrong. He would have died. That is what would have happened. Aaron is old. His investigations have seldom if ever involved this sort of direct danger.”

“That wasn’t my impression,” said Yuri. “The Mayfair family tried to kill him once before. Aaron has seen plenty of danger. Aaron has been in danger in other investigations. Aaron is a treasure to the Order because he has seen and done so much.”

“Ah, but you see, it is not the family which is the threat to Aaron now, it is not the Mayfair Witches, it is an individual whom they have aided and abetted, so to speak.”

“Lasher.”

“I see you know the file.”

“I know it.”

“Did you see this individual when you went to Donnelaith?”

“You know I didn’t. If you are working on this investigation, you’ve already seen the reports I copied to the Elders, the reports I made for Aaron. You know I talked to people who had seen this individual, as you put it. But I didn’t see him myself. Have you seen him?”

“Why are you so angry, Yuri?” What a lovely, deep, reverent voice.

“I’m not angry, Stolov. I am in the grip of suspicion. All my life I’ve been devoted to the Talamasca. The Talamasca brought me into adulthood. I might not have been brought that far if it hadn’t been for the Order. But something is not right. People are acting in strange ways. Your tone is strange. I want to speak directly with the Elders. I want to speak to them!”

“That never happens, Yuri,” said Stolov quietly. “No one speaks to the Elders, you know that. Aaron could have told you that. You can communicate with them in the customary fashion…”

“Ah, this is an emergency.”

“For the Talamasca? No. For Aaron and for Yuri, yes, definitely. But for the Talamasca, nothing is an emergency. We are like the Church of Rome.”

“Rowan Mayfair, you said they found her. What is this about?”

“She is in Mercy Hospital, but sometime this morning they will take her home. Overnight she was on a respirator. This morning they removed her from it. She continues to breathe on her own. But she will not recover. They confirmed this last night. There has been enormous toxic damage to her brain, the kind of damage produced by shock, drug overdose, an allergic reaction, a sudden rise in insulin; I am quoting her physicians now to you. I’m telling you what they are telling the other members of the family.

“They know she cannot recover. And her own wishes regarding such situations are in writing. As the designee of the legacy she laid down her own medical instructions for such a crisis. That once a negative prognosis had been confirmed, she be removed from life support and taken home.”

Stolov looked at his watch, a rather hideous contraption full of tiny dials and digital letters.

“They are probably taking her home now.” He looked at Yuri. “Aaron is most surely with them. Give Aaron some time.”

“I’ll give you exactly twenty minutes. Explain yourself. Then I’m going on.”

“All right. This individual-Lasher-he is very dangerous. He is unique as far as anyone knows. He is trying desperately to propagate. There is some evidence that some members of the Mayfair family might be useful to him in this, that the family carries a genetic peculiarity, an entire set of chromosomes which other humans do not have. There is evidence that Michael Curry carries this same surplus of mysterious chromosomes. That it is a trait peculiar to those of the northern countries, in particular the Celts. When Rowan and Michael mated, they produced this unique creature. Not human. But it might not have been successfully born if there had not been some extraordinary spiritual intervention. The migration, if you will, of a powerful and willful soul. This soul entered the embryo before its own soul had taken control of it, and this soul directed the embryo’s development, availing itself of these surplus chromosomes to produce a new and perhaps unprecedented design. It was a meeting if you will of mystery and science, of something spiritual and a genetic irregularity of which that spiritual force took advantage. A sort of physical opportunity for an occult and powerful thing.”

Yuri considered this for a long moment. Lasher, the spirit who would be flesh, who had threatened Petyr van Abel with his grim predictions, who had tried again and again to materialize, had been born to Rowan Mayfair. This much he had deduced before he ever came here. That the creature wanted to mate, to reproduce, that was something he had not considered. But it was logical.

“Oh, very logical,” said Stolov. “Evolution is about reproduction. This thing is now caught up in the broad scheme of evolution. It has made its grand entry. It would now reproduce and take over. And if it can find the right woman, it will be successful. Rowan Mayfair has been destroyed by its attempts to reproduce. Her body has been ravaged by her brief aborted pregnancies. Other women in the family, lacking the surplus chromosomes, suffered fatal hemorrhages within hours of the creature’s visitation. The family knows the creature destroyed Rowan Mayfair, and that it is a menace to other Mayfair females, that it will use up their lives rapidly in an effort to find one who can survive fertilization and successfully give birth. The family will close ranks, protect itself and hide this knowledge, just as it has always done with such occult secrets in the past. It will seek the creature in its own fashion, using its immense resources. It will not allow the world outside to assist or to know.”

“What is the danger to Aaron? I don’t see it from what you say.”

“Very obvious. Aaron knows about this creature. He knows what it is. In the first days after Christmas, before the Mayfairs understood what had happened, careless things were done. Forensic evidence was gathered from the site of the creature’s birth. It was sent to an impersonal agency. Then Rowan herself contacted a doctor in San Francisco, sending him tissue samples of this creature and of herself. This was a terrible error. The doctor who analyzed these materials in a private institute in San Francisco is now dead. The doctor who delivered the material, who came here to discuss it with the family, has completely disappeared. Last night he left his hotel here without explanation. He has not been seen since. In New York, the genetic tests done in connection with this creature have vanished. Same in a genetic institute in Europe to which the New York institution sent samples of his work. All traces of the being are now gone from official sources.

“But we…we the Talamasca know all about this being. We know everything about him. More even than the poor unfortunates who studied his cells beneath the microscope. More even than the family now struggling to protect itself from him. The being will seek to eradicate our knowledge. This was inevitable. Perhaps…an error in judgment was made.”

“What do you mean?”

The waitress set down the small cup of black espresso. Yuri tested the porcelain with his fingers. Too hot.

“ ‘We watch and we are always here,’ ” said Stolov. “This is our motto. But sometimes these powerful things we watch, these brooding and unclassifiable forms of energy or evil or whatever they are-these things seek to destroy all witnesses, and we must suffer the consequences of our long vigilance, of our understanding, so to speak. Perhaps if we had been better prepared for the birth of this being. But then…I am not sure anyone knew that such a thing was really possible. And now…it is too late.

“This thing will surely try to kill Aaron. It will try to kill you. It will try to kill me once it knows that I am involved in this investigation. That is why something has changed with the Talamasca. That is why something, as you said, is not right. The Elders have bolted the doors; the Elders would assist the family, yes, insofar as they can. But the Elders will not allow our members to be placed in jeopardy. They will not stand by idle as this thing seeks to invade our archives, and destroy our priceless records. As I said…these things have happened before. We have a mode for such assaults.”

“Yet it isn’t an emergency.”

“No, it is merely another way of operating. A tightening of security; a protective concealment of evidence; a demand for blind obedience on the part of those in danger. That you, and that Aaron go back to the Motherhouse at once.”

“Aaron refuses to do this?”

“Adamantly. He will not leave the family. He regrets his obedience on Christmas Day.”

“So what is the official goal of the Order? Merely to protect itself?”

“To do the extreme protective thing.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Yes, you do. The extreme protective measure is to destroy the threat. But that is what you must leave to us. To me and to my investigators. For we know how to do this, how to track this being, how to locate it, how to close in upon it, and how to stop it from achieving its goals.”

“And you want me to believe that our Order, our beloved Talamasca, has done this sort of thing in the past.”

“Absolutely. We cannot be passive when our own survival is at stake. We have another mode of operation. In that mode, you and Aaron can play no part.”

“There are pieces missing from this picture.”

“How so? I thought it was very complete.”

“You speak of a threat to the family. You speak of a threat to the Order. What about the threat to others? What is the moral disposition of this entity? If it does mate successfully, what will be the consequences?”

“Ah, but that will not happen. It is unthinkable that that should happen. You do not know what you ask.”

“Oh, I think I do,” said Yuri. “I spoke, after all, with those who’ve seen it. Once this creature has secured the proper females, it could propagate at remarkable speed-the sort of speed one sees in the insect world or the world of reptiles, a speed so much greater than that of other mammals that it would soon overrun them, overpower them, conceivably wipe them out.”

“You are very clever. You know too much about this thing. It’s unfortunate that you read the file, that you went to Donnelaith. But don’t fear, this creature will not succeed. And who knows its life span? Who knows but that its hour, with or without propagation, would not be short?”

Stolov lifted his knife and fork, cut a small wedge-shaped piece from the sweet roll on the plate before him and ate it silently, while Yuri watched. Then he set down the knife and fork and looked at Yuri.

“Persuade Aaron to go back with you. Persuade him to leave the Mayfair family and their problems in our hands.”

“You know, it just doesn’t sound right,” said Yuri. “There is so much involved here. And you don’t speak of the big picture. And this is not the style of the Talamasca which I know. This thing, it is so dangerous…No. This does not fit with what I know of my Order, my brethren, not at all.”

“What in the world can you possibly mean?”

“You’re very patient with me. I appreciate it. But our Order is too smooth for all this. The Elders know how to take care of everything without creating suspicion and alarm. There’s something crude about the way it all happened. It would have been a simple thing for the Elders to keep me contented in London. To keep Aaron contented. But this is all clumsy, hasty. Impolite. I don’t know. This is not the Talamasca to me.”

“Yuri, the Order expected your complete obedience. It had a right to expect it.” For the first time, the man displayed a tiny bit of anger. He laid his napkin down on the table, rudely, beside his fork. Dirty napkin on the table. Napkin smeared with sugar and stained with droplets of coffee. Yuri stared at it.

“Yuri,” said Stolov. “Women have died in the last forty-eight hours. This doctor, Samuel Larkin, is probably dead too. Rowan Mayfair will die sometime during the next few weeks. The Elders did not expect that you would cause them trouble at this hour. They did not anticipate that you would add to their burdens, any more than they anticipated Aaron’s disloyalty.”

“Disloyalty?”

“I told you. He won’t leave the family. But he is an old man. There is nothing he can do against Lasher. There never was!” Anger again.

Yuri sat back. He thought for a long moment. He stared at the napkin. The man picked it up, wiped his mouth with it again and laid it back down. Yuri stared at it.

“I want to communicate with the Elders,” said Yuri. “I want to know these things from them.”

“Of course. Take Aaron with you today. Take him to New York. You’re tired. Rest first if you will, but only in a location known to us. Then go. And when you reach New York, you can contact the Elders. You will have time. You can discuss this between you, you and Aaron, and then you must go on back to London. You must go home.”

Yuri stood up. He laid the napkin on the chair. “Are you coming with me to see Aaron?”

“Yes, maybe it is for the best that you are here. Maybe it is for the best, for on my own I don’t know that I could ever have convinced him to leave here. We’ll go now. It’s time I talked to him myself.”

“You mean you have not done that?”

“Yuri, I have my hands full, as they say. And Aaron is not cooperative now.”

There was a car waiting for them, an egregious American Lincoln limousine. It was lined in gray velvet. Its glass was so dim that the outside world fell under an edict of utter night. Impossible to really see a city through such windows, Yuri thought. He sat very still. He was thinking of something that had happened to him years ago.

He was remembering the long train ride with his mother into Serbia. She had given him something. An ice pick, though he did not know what it was at the time. It was a long rounded and pointed instrument, made of metal, with a wooden handle which had once been painted, and from which the paint had been chipped away.

“Here, you keep this,” she’d said. “You use it if you have to. You stick it straight in…between the ribs.”

How fierce she’d looked in those moments. And he had been so startled. “But who’s going to hurt us?” he had asked. He did not know at this moment whatever became of the ice pick. Perhaps it had been left on the train.

He had failed her, hadn’t he? Failed her and himself. And now he realized-as this smooth car went up on the freeway, and gained speed-he had no weapon, no ice pick, no knife. Even the Swiss Army knife he carried he had left at home because he was taking a plane. They don’t want such things on a plane.

“You’ll feel better once you’ve communicated with the Elders, once you’ve reported in and been officially invited to return home.”

Yuri looked at Stolov, who sat there all in priestly black, with only a bit of white collar showing, and his large pale hands opening and closing as they rested on his knees.

Yuri smiled very deliberately. “You’re right,” he said. “A fax sent to a number in Amsterdam. It is so well calculated to inspire trust.”

“Yuri, please, we need you,” said the man with visible and heartfelt distress.

“I’m sure you do. How far are we from Aaron?”

“Only a few minutes. Everything here is small. Only a few minutes, and we will be there.”

Yuri took the black mouthpiece from the velvet-paneled wall. “Driver,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to stop at a place that sells weapons, guns. You know such a place? Not far out of the way for us?”

“Yes, sir, South Rampart Street.”

“That will be fine.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Stolov, pale bushy eyebrows knitted, face almost sad.

“It’s the gypsy in me,” said Yuri. “Don’t worry.”

The man on South Rampart Street had an arsenal beneath the glass and on the wall behind him. “You need a Louisiana driver’s license,” he said.

Stolov was watching. This infuriated Yuri, that Stolov stood there, watching, as if he were entitled.

“This is an emergency,” said Yuri. “I need a gun with a long barrel, there, that’s fine. Three fifty-seven Magnum. A box of cartridges. Here.” He took the money out of his pocket, hundred-dollar bills, ten of them, then twenty, slowly counted out. “Do not worry,” he said. “I am not a crook. But I need the gun. You understand?”

He loaded it there, in the shadowy little store with Stolov watching. He put the rest of the bullets into his pockets, divided up in little handfuls, heavy, loose.

As they stepped into the sunlight, Stolov said: “You think it’s a simple matter of shooting this thing?”

“No. You are going to stop it, remember? We are going home, Aaron and I. But we are in danger. You said so. Terrible danger. And now I have my gun.” He gestured to the car. “After you.”

“You must not do anything stupid or foolish,” said the other man. It wasn’t anger this time, just apprehension. He laid his hand on Yuri’s hand. Yuri looked down. He thought how pale was the skin of this Norwegian, and how dark was his own.

“Like what?”

“Like try to shoot it, that’s what.” The man was exasperated. “The Order has a right,” he said, “to finer devotion than this.”

“Hmmm. I understand. Don’t worry about it. As we say all over the world where English is spoken, no problem! OK?”

He flashed a smile at Stolov and opened the door of the car for him and waited for him to get in. Now it was Stolov who was suspicious, uneasy, even a little frightened.

And I barely know how to pull the trigger, Yuri thought.